ost as nearly allied
to him in blood, and more nearly by other bonds, than any tie existing
between France and Burgundy. This does not account for the hostile
indifference of southern France and of the French monarch to Jeanne, who
had delivered them; but it accounts for the hostility of Paris and
the adjacent provinces, and Normandy. She was as much against them as
against the English, and the national sentiment to which she, a patriot
before her age, appealed,--bidding not only the English go home, or
fight and be vanquished, which was their only alternative--but
the Burgundians to be converted and to live in peace with their
brothers,--did not exist. Neither to Burgundians, Picards, or Normans
was the daughter of far Champagne a fellow countrywoman. There was
neither sympathy nor kindness in their hearts on that score. Some were
humane and full of pity for a simple woman in such terrible straits; but
no more in Paris than in Rouen was the Maid of Orleans a native champion
persecuted by the English; she was to both an enemy, a sorceress,
putting their soldiers and themselves to shame.

I have no desire to lessen our(1) guilt, whatever cruelty may have
been practised by English hands against the Heavenly Maid. And much
was practised--the iron cage, the chains, the brutal guards, the final
stake, for which may God and also the world, forgive a crime fully and
often confessed. But it was by French wits and French ingenuity that she
was tortured for three months and betrayed to her death. A prisoner of
war, yet taken and tried as a criminal, the first step in her downfall
was a disgrace to two chivalrous nations; but the shame is greater upon
those who sold than upon those who bought; and greatest of all upon
those who did not move Heaven and earth, nay, did not move a finger, to
rescue. And indeed we have been the most penitent of all concerned; we
have shrived ourselves by open confession and tears. We have quarrelled
with our Shakespeare on account of the Maid, and do not know how we
could have forgiven him, but for the notable and delightful discovery
that it was not he after all, but another and a lesser hand that
endeavoured to befoul her shining garments. France has never quarrelled
with her Voltaire for a much fouler and more intentional blasphemy.

The most significant and the most curious after-scene, a pendant to the
remorse and pity of so many of the humbler spectators, was the assembly
held on the Thursday a